


swear to be overdramatic and true

by stuckwithminusharry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Christmas With Family, F/M, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Hinny, Home, Home for Christmas, Marriage, Married Couple, Married Life, One Big Happy Family, Peace, Potter Family-centric (Harry Potter), Returning Home, literally THE fluffiest shit i've ever written can you tell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21951367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckwithminusharry/pseuds/stuckwithminusharry
Summary: They get to stay like that for a small eternity: Harry’s head on her shoulder, Ginny’s arm around him, warm limbs entangled.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 116





	swear to be overdramatic and true

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came about in two parts: one, I was on a train back home from my grandma's place earlier this month and wrote part of this mostly to entertain myself: I then ended up missing my stop because I was too entertained. The next train wasn't until an hour later, so I spent it frolicking around a deserted Christmas market after dark whilst waiting for the next train, listening to the title track of this fic on loop.
> 
> Two, I came back to my grandma's place for Christmas, which is where I turned it into a Christmas fic. I was in need of some unabashed fluff this year - I got through this Christmas Eve mostly because I got to spend much of it curled up in an armchair in my grandma's living room, typing away. Once again, writing pulls me through. :)
> 
> Happy holidays! Hope you like it.

_Snow_ , is his first thought upon materialising behind the apple trees.

Harry Potter draws his wand and slips into view from his Apparition spot, stepping out into the wintry night. A fluffy white blanket has fallen over everything, the grass and the windowsills and the rooftop: the apple trees are all wearing hats.

Above his head, a square of warm, golden light falls from the window that overlooks the garden into the night. Harry’s heart stirs quietly at the sight.

He leaves no trace in the fresh snow on the ground as he makes his way around the cottage to the front door. Auror boots leave no footprints by design, erasing every step behind themselves immediately: by the time he’s slipped through the front door, no sign outside the cottage’s walls betrays he was ever gone.

Harry exhales.

He is extraordinarily lucky, and he knows it: he’s spent most of this mission waiting for something, _anything,_ to go awry like it usually does, for one of the juniors to make a mistake, for the lot of them to walk into a trap, for him to spend the holidays at St. Mungo’s again. Even now that he’s here, looking around at his quiet home, at the enchanted fairy lights floating around the ceiling: it all seems a little too good to be trusted.

It isn’t even midnight yet. Harry bites back his smile for fear of jinxing it.

He slips out of his Auror gear and leaves it in the downstairs bathroom, memories of the mission quickly fading as he sneaks up the stairs in just his t-shirt and boxers. A stripe of gold glowing under James’ bedroom door disappears at the sound of Harry’s approaching footsteps: his eldest hastily pulls his duvet over his head when he pushes the door open.

“Evenin’”, Harry says softly into the room, and James’ scarlet head reluctantly reappears under the pillow, moonlight illuminating his sheepish face. “Not asleep yet?”

“ _Dad!”_ , James whispers, folding back the duvet. “You’re back!”

Harry is well aware that his surprise is – at least in part – feigned, but the sheer elation on his son’s face is real: he notices it with a quiet warmth unfurling in his chest.

“And you’re up past your bedtime, I believe.”

“I wanted to wait for you”, James says quickly.

Harry doesn’t bother reminding him that waiting is pointless: for all they knew, he may not have made it back before Boxing Day.

“Christmas Eve, with a little luck”, he told Ginny, hesitant to even voice it to the children.

He never makes promises for a reason. The let-down is so much more devastating when they get their hopes up.

Harry sighs. “Close your eyes. Father Christmas isn’t going to stop by here until all children are sound asleep.”

James rolls his eyes.

“It’s not like I _believe_ in any of that stuff anymore – and Mum took the presents downstairs twenty minutes ago”, he adds, as though that settles the Father-Christmas-matter once and for all.

“Lily still believes it”, Harry reminds him. “Don’t go and ruin it for her, hm?”

“Fine”, James mutters, pulling his duvet back to his chin. “Love you, anyway.”

“Love you, too.”

Harry pulls James’ door shut as quietly as he can and continues down the dark hallway; won’t be able to sleep without this.

Lily is curled up in a mountain of blankets like a kitten, clutching her stuffed Crumple-Horned Snorkack firmly in her little arms. Her night-light is floating by the bed, painting her face in faint red and pink. A string of enchanted fairy lights is wrapped around her bedframe, too, cheerily twinkling in the dark.

Harry lets himself linger, just for a moment: brushes hair out of her slender face and watches her brows furrow slightly in her sleep. Far away in a dream somewhere, he knows. He could parade a real Crumple-Horned Snorkack through her bedroom and she likely wouldn’t wake, but he still tiptoes back to her door and throws one last glance over his shoulder before he leaves. Entirely too peaceful to be true, he wants to think, but stops himself.

Peaceful. Peaceful. Peaceful.

Al’s light is on, too: He’s holding his book to his chest with one arm, the other dangling off his bed in mid-air, mouth wide open as he sleeps. Harry carefully loosens the book from his grip, finds the bookmark on the wooden floor, and places it quietly on Al’s nightstand. He gently tucks both his arms back under the cover and runs his fingers lightly through Al’s unruly black hair, so much like his own.

Al shifts and mutters in his sleep. Harry waits until he has stilled, worried to wake him, and quietly backs out of the room only when Al has resumed snoring. Harry grins as he turns to leave, finally arriving at the last door.

A stripe of gold is falling out into the hallway from here, too: he pushes it open to find Ginny curled up in their king-sized bed, already in her pyjamas, but awake, her nose buried in a copy of _Witch Weekly_. She looks up at the sound of the door, smile ever more radiant in the half-dark and the glow of her bedside lamp.

“I thought I heard someone climb down the chimney”, she says, beaming at him as he climbs on the mattress next to her, resting his head on her shoulder.

“Hi”, she mutters, raking her fingers through his hair and down his shoulder. A tingle travels down Harry’s spine. “I can’t believe you made it.”

He closes his eyes at her touch, tension falling off him: two cold weeks without her are melting quickly in his memory. “Me neither, honestly.”

Harry spots a tower of presents in the armchair by the window. “Want any help with those?”, he asks, despite being far too content, far too comfortable now, to move.

Ginny hums quietly in response.

“In a bit. I think James was eavesdropping.”

“Oh, he was.”

She chuckles, flicking a page. “I thought it was too quiet. Always a bit fishy when they behave, isn’t it?”

And indeed, a peculiar quiet has got hold of the Potter family home: so strange and unprecedented in its completeness Harry cannot help but strain his ears every once in a while, listening intently for tip-toeing in the hallway, heated whispering: all the tell-tale signs his children have slipped out of their beds.

“I know you can’t sleep now”, she mutters after a few minutes of quiet, Harry’s head still on her shoulder. “Do you just want to hang out?”

She knows him too well, he thinks, some strange, wild gladness swelling in his chest.

It’s a part of coming home: letting go of the hyper-alertness that keeps him alive while he’s out there, of being constantly on edge. Sometimes, when he doesn’t get back until the early hours of the morning, he lies awake next to Ginny and can’t bring himself to shut off. He watches daylight creep over the apple trees through the window, waits for everyone else to wake up and ends up dozing off on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, more passing out from exhaustion than real sleep.

Ginny knows that’s part of the deal.

“Reading sounds good, actually”, he says, lifting his head off her shoulder regretfully to go find his book.

Teddy had, in recent months, taken to devouring adventure novels the size of bricks in a mere matter of days and then spending the weekly family dinners at the Burrow talking rapidly about little else. On one such Saturday evening, Harry had politely asked if Teddy would ever let him borrow one: the smile on Teddy’s face was absolutely brilliant, and Harry has been reading along with him ever since, his godson’s sheer enthusiasm, his joy at having someone to talk to after, impossibly infectious.

They flick through their respective pages in comfortable quiet, Ginny’s fingers drawing absent-minded circles on his thigh as she reads. A spark of warmth prickles at the back of his neck at every lazy scratch on her fingernail.

“I’m having an affair with Neville”, Ginny says as though announcing the weather.

Harry looks up from his novel, blinking at her.

“I thought I was having an affair with Neville”, he says, face plain.

“No, that was last week.”

“I see. Who am I sleeping with again?”

“Hermione. Says so right here on page 12.”

“I better give her a call, then”, he says, returning to his book.

The corners of Ginny’s mouth betray her: Harry grins over at her and she snickers into the magazine, her quiet laughter like waves rolling through his body, her cheek leaning against the top of his head. Warm, liquid bliss fills his chest: her small hand resumes caressing his thigh like she’s not even aware she’s doing it, though he doesn’t doubt she is. He draws in a slow, deep breath, too content to move or even focus much on anything except Ginny, least of all his book.

“You alright?”, Ginny asks after a while, not lifting her eyes off of a five-page article about the drummer of some girl band who’d been photographed snogging the bassist.

“Hm?”

“You haven’t turned your page in, like, ten minutes.”

“’M fine”, Harry mutters, forever startled that it’s truthful, and it is. “Wasn’t she dating some Newcomer Harpy?”, he adds, nodding towards the article.

“Hm-hm”, Ginny says. “Nothing interesting about a quiet, amicable breakup, though. That’s why ours are always really dramatic.”

Harry snorts. “Like I’d break up with you in public.”

“It’s adorable how you think _I’m_ the dumpee in this scenario.”

Harry looks up in mock concern, bumping his foot into her leg. “You’re breaking up with me?”

Ginny hums as though deep in thought. “I guess I could loudly ask you for a divorce next time we want to get out of some horrible Ministry party. Might be fun.”

“Wish you’d had that idea last year”, Harry mutters darkly, remembering the lengthy Christmas feast they hadn’t been able to wriggle out of. He’d been shaking lametta out of his hair for hours after. “Alright, I’m down, but I’m taking the kids.”

Ginny pats his leg, unfazed. “Yeah, you wish.”

Harry smiles, slouching into her side – mission forgotten, peaceful, _home._ Ginny turns to look at him as his eyes flutter shut, exhaustion finally taking over.

All the way from the kitchen, they hear the enchanted garden gnome that lives inside their baby blue cuckoo’s clock – Luna’s moving-in present – announce _“twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock!”_.

Ginny presses a kiss to his temple. “Merry Christmas, babe.”

“Merry Christmas”, Harry mutters. “Love you.”

“You, too.” He feels the pads of Ginny’s fingers draw slow circles on his scalp, her palm brush over his jet-black hair. “Glad you’re back.”

He merely hums in response, too content to speak, not wanting the moment to end, this strange, deep peace that fills him.

They get to stay like that for a small eternity: Harry’s head on her shoulder, Ginny’s arm around him, warm limbs entangled.

Just as Harry is ready to doze off, Ginny gasps beside him.

“Listen”, she whispers, as Harry reluctantly opens his eyes.

And there it is: from outside their bedroom door comes the quiet _tap-tap-tap_ of small feet on the hardwood floor, sneaking towards the stairs.

“I think we’ve got some Christmas elves on the loose”, Ginny whispers.

Harry grins at her, and she grins back, quietly conspiring.

“Wanna go catch them?”

They climb out of bed as quickly and quietly as they can, pressing their ears to the bedroom door. Ginny shakes her head and reaches for the doorknob.

“They’re lucky we love them so much.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are cherished. I hope this brightened your holidays a little, in case you needed it, too - and I'll see you very soon. x


End file.
